Crybaby Plush (WIP)! UPDATED 2/2/2020 (Patreon)

02/02/2020 UPDATE: Hi fish fries, I received my samples yesterday, and I am in love with them!! I thought I'd update this post and show you some photos before going into a little more detail about the plan for the Kickstarter I have in mind that'll hopefully start sometime in March-April!

SAMPLE PHOTOS:

Overall, the jumbo crybaby plush measures in at approximately 20 inches wide!! The baby crybaby keychain plush measures at just around 4 inches wide in comparison!

I took a look at some other plush kickstarters to get a general idea about how they're priced and it made me realize that a lot of artists tend to underprice their plushes, especially for kickstarter. I feel like this is more of a community problem, as there's always a fear of us not being able to sell our merchandise because people may consider them as "too expensive" especially compared to prices seen at corporate/commercial industries. 

I know there's a lot of boring details here, but please bare with me as I try to talk about the process and go a bit more into the details, because I really do want to charge what I think the plushes are worth without undercutting myself, but I also don't want to be seen as "extra" or "trying to rip people off" for pricing a plush at a much higher rate than what people may be seeing. 

THE PROCESS:

The first step of producing a plush is paying for a sample fee upfront. Including shipping, it costed me $135 for both the large sample of crybaby and the miniature keychain--I was extremely lucky that my representative offered to produce the mini-keychain plush at no additional charge (so the $135 was solely for the big crybaby) because I had been working and maintaining contact and a good relationship wtih her for over a year and a half! (I worked on a couple plush designs with her prior when I did a fanart plush series, which took me over six months to finalize prototypes before they were ready to be sold). 

The $135 is a huge upfront cost, but it is a necessity in the process of creating any sort of plush design--the fees include unlimited numbers of revisions on the prototype until I am satisfied with it! When the process is finally finished, the final prototype is then sent to me for an additional in person quality check and I go over any other necessary changes in fabric, pattern, color, and etc with my representative.

This process of revisions, communication between my manufacturer, drawing and showing how I need revisions made while also asking for additional photos and videos to ensure the best quality as possible *from over a screen*, is one of the most time consuming processes throughout the whole plush creation procedure. 

Thankfully, crybaby's generic shape and lack of details made it easier to work through the process--overall, I went through about 3 revisions with crybaby (which included 3 different prototypes) and that took place over the span of a little longer than a month! This was a huge difference than when I first originally worked with this manufacturer to create a fan-art plushie (with lots of details and colors), which took about 6 months to revise before the final prototype.

PROTOTYPE FINALIZED AND SHIPPED:

The prototype was shipped to me and delivered on 10AM of February 1st!!! This was more fun and it was just a matter of me viewing the sample in person, seeing how I liked the colors, getting a feel for the fabric, hugging it to measure how comfortable it was (which, by the way, big crybaby was very huggable, 10/10). I wanted to go ahead and start brainstorming the ideas for a kickstarter so I was looking up some other successful kickstarters in order to gauge what worked well for them and what didn't--I also did this with some friends who also priced their plushes as well but sold them through preorders!

I saw a lot of underpricing during this research, which I think is really understandable because artists want support for their products and don't want to be told that their stuff is too expensive, but it made me really wish that people would understand the immense amount of process behind what it takes to self-fund a prototype, manage revisions as quickly as possible without compromising quality, plan a kickstarter, pay for bulk production after running the kickstarter, and then shipping out all rewards after the kickstarter has ended. It is a huge amount of work, especially if we're only talking about a small artist team (in my case, at most my mom would be the only one helping me pack, maybe friends if it was safe enough with the whole COVID situation)! 

I hope that by explaining the process a bit further, I can have people begin to understand why these items are more expensive than what you'd find at a Walmart or another large corporation (which, by the way, you'd never be able to find one just like Crybaby, because I designed him!!), and if you yourself find yourself saying something like "woah that's a hefty price tag for such a tiny or simple little thing" (and that's okay, I catch myself doing that too!!), I hope you'll consider remembering the huge amount of work and funding upfront that it takes to bring a huge project like this to life! Especially for a tiny independent artist team.

Okay okay, no more boring stuff!! If you made it this far, I am SO SO thankful to you for making it this far! Let's talk about some

KICKSTARTER PRICING, PLANS, AND STRETCH GOALS:

I went ahead and asked on instagram earlier today to see what potential stretchgoals you'd like to see in a Kickstarter, & not to my surprise, the main response I got was crybaby varients, specifically of our latest discovery--the rare pink Crybaby!

I most likely won't be making more variations, at least for this kickstarter, since I also decided to work with a total of 3 sizes for the upcoming kickstarter: 4 inches (mini plush keychain), 10 inches (standard), and 20 inches (jumbo)! The prototype in the above photos is for the 20 inch jumbo crybaby and the 4 inch keychain, so I will be working with my representative to get a 10 inch sample, as well as samples going of our newest pink crybaby as a potential stretch goal!

The price points for these will be as follows:

4 inch mini plush keychain: $17 ( 24 hour early bird price $15)

10 inch standard crybaby: $35 ( 24 hour early bird price $30)

20 inch jumbo crybaby: $65 ( 24 hour early bird price $60)

And I will hopefully be able to also offer little family packs (all 3 sizes) for $110 ($100 for the 24 hour early bird price)! 

I'll also be working on fun add ons, such as bringing back the crybaby collar pins (with a special pink crybaby varient!!), some stickers, maybe an adoption certificate, and more! This will be something I'll be attempting to work on while I also juggle patreon, shop updates, and collaborations so please forgive me if I'm a little slow with updates >_<

Thank you so much for your patience and support!! Again, if you managed to read through this whole update, thank you so much I truly appreciate it T_T;;; Please feel free to comment if you have any questions, and I'll hopefully be working on more updates with regards to the kickstarter in the near future!

Stay safe, and as always-

All the best!

Kir

🐟💦🐟💦🐟💦🐟💦🐟💦🐟💦🐟💦🐟💦🐟💦🐟💦🐟💦🐟💦🐟💦🐟💦

01/07/2020 UPDATE: Hi fish fries!!!! I paid for a sample for a potential crybaby plush to be released in the future! I originally put down the sample super early on Tuesday night (I didn't intend to have these plushes available for sale until possibly the summer because revisions usually take a super long time--my last plush project took me over 6 months with revisions before they were finally ready for sale so I was expecting the same thing ><!) & they already gave me a basic prototype last night!! How exciting!

I couldn't decide on what sizes to make--I really really wanted just a big one to hold and snuggle with, but I love the idea of a smaller plush keychain size, so I ended up making a sample of both!

The plush was based off of this illustration I did for crybaby before around one year ago:

I got some mock up photos today, the big plush size is around 20 inches (50cm) and the plush keychain size is around 4 inches (10cm)!! I'm super happy with how they turned out so far, but there's definitely some revisions to be made so I thought I'd make a little post detailing the journey!

Big Crybaby Photos:

Keychain Crybaby Photos: 

REVISIONS:

As I mentioned, I was expecting to work with developing this prototype over the course of a few months since it took so long on my very first project (which I made for a fandom)! I was pleasantly surprised to see that they finished the prototype so quickly and with a surprisingly accurate shape!!!

I definitely did not expect crybaby to become so thick--originally when I envisioned this plush, I definitely imagined a flatter shape (kind of like traditional fish plushes) but I was SUPER pleased to see how round he came out, considering he looks and fits more like an actual plush versus a pillow!!

I gave them some minor revisions, such as changes to the main body color (which should be more teal instead of blue, they used the swatch 186* for the body which we are changing to 173* for hopefully that more blue-green look)! 

*Refers to the cloth swatch on the second image below!

They are also missing the white fin details which I've requested they added in, and sewn his bottom fin onto the right side (making it look like one elongated fin when that fin is supposed to be more reminescent of the anal fin on the traditional fish body, so I've requested them to sew that fin on the bottom seam while they add the missing pectoral fin to his right side!

Aside from this, there really aren't many changes I wanted to implement over all--I am super super happy with how this came out and after the main body structure has been solidified, they'll move on to printing on his eyes (the piece of paper is a placeholder for us to visualize) and then that'll be it for the prototype before it's shipped to me for a quality check!

I'll be updating more on the second revision and seeing if there's anything else that needs to be added, but this post will definitely be updated as we go along!!

I'm super excited for the idea of a crybaby plush! It's been about a year since I originally made his design for one of my very first sweater releases and I'm so happy to see how far my simple, dorky little mascot has come ToT I hope you all can look forward to seeing a final product soon!!

All the best 🐟

Kir